A Chance Madness
by runaway scrape
Summary: Was it just a chance occurance, or is there more meaning to one witnessed death and a shortchanged fight? Is it madness or a virus? Will the crew survive?
1. Chapter 1

**A Chance of Madness**

**_Disclaimer: Firefly and all of its related characters, imprints, trademarks, servicemarks, et cetera are the intellectual property of Joss Whedon, and maybe 20th Century Fox. I'm only borrowing them for a little while, and I promise to put them back where I found them._**

_Author's Notes: Dialogue within brackets [] is Mandarin. (Pretend, okay?). If I actually know the Mandarin, then it's in italics.Temperatures are in Celsius. This is my second fanfic (please see "A Kiss is Still a Kiss"), and I appreciate all feedback, most especially the constructive criticism._

**Chapter One**

"Why do we keep coming back here?" Wash asked, peering out of the cargo bay. "No job could make up for the smell of this place."

"Maybe it's the smell that keeps the Alliance from looking too closely at this place. It's sure easier to get a little business done here than Persephone," Mal replied, dropping the last of the cargo boxes on the mule.

"Speak for yourself," Inara answered.

"Show a woman the 'verse, and what do you get?" Wash shook his head.

"A receipt?" Mal asked. Before Inara could snipe back at him, he wiped his hands on his pants and addressed the crew. "You got two hours. Keep your communicators on you, and nobody – I mean, nobody – steps back on Serenity lessen they wash their shoes off first."

The crew, those of them that were heading out, looked out at Beauregard and took Mal's instructions to heart. There was a reason its citizens called their planet "Buggered" more often than its rightful name, and that reason had a great deal to do with the near constant rain, soupy ground, and pervading stench of dirty diapers and boiled cabbage.

"What're we looking for?" Kaylee asked as Simon carefully sorted the small, dusty vials.

"Standard antibiotics and immune boosters," he replied, turning each of the bottles he'd checked until their labels all faced the same way. "We're running a little low. Also, see if you can find anything that starts with the syllables "amphayto-". It's for River."

Kaylee squatted down and began looking through the bottles as well. "There's ice cream after this, right?"

"If you say so," he peered at a label old enough to crackle under his gentle fingers.

"Well," Mal declared, standing outside the building of his client, placing his hands on his hips, "that was unnecessarily unpleasant."

"Yes, sir," Zoe replied.

"I liked it," Jayne disagreed, cleaning his nails on a very large, very spiky knife.

"There was blood coming out of someone else. And mucus. That's why you liked it," Wash explained to him.

"And I got paid," Jayne grinned. "Day's off to a good start, s'far as I'm concerned."

The alley they strode out of branched off one of the main streets, wide, unpaved, and ankle deep in thick, sewage-smelling mud. While the crew of Serenity picked their ways back to the mule with utmost care, most of the people around them slogged through the cold slop with little notice.

"Do you think it was wise, breaking the nose of a paying client like that, sir?" Zoe asked.

"The important part I think you need to remember," Mal answered, "is that he was paying – which before the breakage, he wasn't."

"I was thinking of how other paying clients might react on hearing that we're acquiring a habit of doing that."

"Well, now, that might serve to our benefit. Eventu-"

They were cut off by a fight breaking out of a nearby building. Zoe immediately checked her holster and scanned the crowd around them. Jayne held Vera up a little closer to his chest. The two combatants were male and female, and the building they spilled out of wasn't a tavern, but a dry goods store. The woman was definitely getting the better part of the fight.

"Doreen, no, wai-"

Doreen slugged the man with a roundhouse that would have done Jayne proud, sending the man reeling over the sidewalk and into the muck of the street. He landed flat on his back. She leaped at him, straddled him and started pounding at his face with smallish sharp fists.

"Well, this day just gets better and better!" Jayne grinned.

"Doreen! No!" the man gasped under the barrage. Blood and spit began to fly. The crowd around them began to pull back, people jostling either to see or to get away.

"Sir," Zoe began.

"Yeah, I know," Mal answered and waded in just ahead of her.

"Hey, what're you guys spoilin' the fun for?" Jayne called indignantly.

Mal grabbed Doreen by the upper arms and hauled her off her victim. She twisted and kicked, snarling with rage. He likely would have lost his grip on her, but her fight wasn't something thought out or planned. She was acting on sheer rage, which enabled him to haul her back up onto the porch and away from the man she'd been beating.

Zoe had her hands full, pulling that man out of the mud he'd been near trampled into. His face was a mess, and he was more or less incoherent with shock.

"You got a quarrel goin' on here?" Mal asked, keeping Doreen on her toes and depriving her of leverage.

"N-no," the man swore through broken teeth. "Don't rightly know what took her. We's just shoppin' a bit, and I asked her what she thought of the flannel shirt for our pa."

"Another family split asunder by flannel," Wash sadly shook his head. Zoe gave him a quelling glance.

Doreen didn't answer, but the fight in her suddenly wound down, and she could barely keep to her feet. Wary, Mal lowered her to the planks of the sidewalk, and as he leaned over her, caught a whiff of something.

"Might be you need to keep her away from whatever spirits your pa likes," he told the young man.

"Doreen?!" Clearly the idea of his sister drinking was even more difficult to reconcile than the fact that she'd just beaten him senseless.

"Amphaytolactine?" Kaylee asked, holding out a twenty milliliter vial of black glass.

"That's the one. Stronger than amphaytolinitol, and it's only a year past its expiration date."

"Isn't that a bad thing?"

"The expiration date is actually set five to ten years before the drug loses its potency, and that's if it's exposed to direct sunlight. The glass protected it."

"Well, now, why'd they go and do a thing like that?"

"Keeps the hospitals and doctors buying fresh stock," Simon answered, clearing Kaylee's shelves of the remaining six bottles. "Protects them from a lawsuit should something go wrong."

She followed him up to the counter, where a witheringly skinny old woman took a few coins from him, wrapped the bottles up in cheap paper and put them in a bag. As Simon gathered his supplies up, Kaylee slipped an arm through his.

"So, now that we're done with your shopping, and I did come along to help, I do believe that means you owe me," she smiled.

"Ice cream?" he asked.

"Perhaps. Or possibly frilly dresses. I spotted a store round the corner."

"I… uh, I don't think they'll carry my size."

She laughed and pulled him along with her. 

"I'm sure they won't have anything that complements my eyes."

"Those sweet blue things? A'course they will. A little lace, some flouncy ruffles…"

He looked up from her smiling face and saw the woman across the street standing at the edge of the sidewalk, tears streaming down her face.

"Kaylee, what's –"

And the woman deliberately stepped out in front of a team of horses hauling a heavy load. It happened so fast that no one, not the team driver, not the other woman standing beside her, could do a thing. There was a horrific smack as the near horse knocked her down, and then hooves and wheels drove her into the mud.

Kaylee's hands flew up to cover her mouth in shock. Simon dropped his bag and staggered through the sludge, across the street to reach her. The team driver had his hands full trying to keep his panicked horses from bolting.

It was too late. Simon squatted down beside her and pulled her long hair away from her face and neck. There was no need to take a pulse. The awkward crook of her neck and the hoof sized crater just above and behind her temple had been the end of her. With thumb and forefinger, he closed her eyes.

"MELLY?" the other woman screamed, dashing around the wagon the where Simon stood.

He caught her and pulled her away from the mangled corpse. Several passers-by had stopped and begun to murmur and wave hands and weep.

"She's gone."

"No! No, Melly, you get up! You get up right now, y'hear!"

"I'm sorry," Simon told her more firmly. "Melly's dead."

"But…no, we's just come t'town for her weddin' dress makin's," the woman shook her head, still trying to get a clear view of her friend. Simon pulled her around to an angle where she couldn't see the gore spreading through the mud.

"Is there anyone else with you?" he asked. Kaylee came up behind him, holding his bags of precious medicines.

"My brother," the woman replied in a tiny, numb voice. "Melly's fiancé. Melly, why?"

He didn't have an answer for her, and Melly had left none. The only thing he could guess from the whiff he'd gotten when he'd bent over her, was that she'd been drinking quite a bit.

Dispirited, they returned to Serenity. Book had seen to the refueling, and Kaylee thanked him quietly, still terribly distressed by what she'd seen. She'd been in no mood for ice cream or ruffled flounces. Mal, Zoe, Jayne, and Wash arrived shortly after they did, newly acquired funds in hand.

"I'm just sayin' you could have let it go a little longer," Jayne was complaining. "I didn't even get to place a bet."

"I doubt anyone would have taken the odds on that fight," Mal answered, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

"That was no fight," Zoe replied, pulling off crates of rations. "He never raised a finger against her. He wasn't even feelin' any hurt after we pulled her off him. Not yet, any rate."

"Yeah," Mal answered in a quiet voice. "That kind of killin' rage, you see that when someone's been killed or raped. Don't figure. Not even if she were drunk."

"Someone was drunk?" Simon asked.

"Lady in a fight, and I didn't even get to see the whole gorram thing," Jayne continued his complaint.

"Jayne," Malcolm sighed, "you got that malady where your jaw keeps moving. Look into that."

"There was a woman across the street from us," Simon explained. "She walked right in front of a team of horses. On purpose. I think she'd been drinking too."

"A rather odd coincidence," Book stated, entering the conversation.

"Yeah, well, you can hardly blame the inhabitants of this world for taking an extra refreshment break. S'none of our worry. Wash, we break atmo in twenty."

"Aye aye, sahib," Wash waved a half-salute his way and wandered up to the bridge.

Kaylee paused in the engine room, the tool she'd just picked up held slackly in her hand. It was just terrible, what had happened. The split-second image of that woman, Melly, being run down by the horses kept appearing in her mind – the way her body had been jolted, flapping like a rag doll in a heavy breeze, then falling under the horses' hooves. Why would anyone do that? How bad did it have to be for that kind of death to be preferable to life? What about her friend and her fiance?

She sat down just beside the engine, listening to the hum of Serenity's life force. At least she had Serenity. Nothing could get so bad that she'd leave this ship. She looked at the tool in her hand, a magnetometer flux reader, trying to remember what it was she'd come in to do. Her head was starting to ache something fierce. Probably the stress of the day, seeing what she'd seen – and again, unbidden, the image sat in front of her eyes. She winced at the remembered sound, the horrible crunch as hoof had met skull.

What if… what if things ever did get that bad? It was a bad way to go, but nowhere near bad as Reavers. Or what Jubal Early had promised her. Suddenly, she was shaking, tears falling down her face. She'd been such a coward, hadn't even tried to stop him. River had been brave enough to put on a suit and jump through the black over to his ship. Hadn't been for her, Kaylee'd still be trussed up in her own engine room, trembling with fear. The captain would have been well within his rights to fire her, kick her off Serenity. Kaylee's mind conjured up the image of Mal, mouth twisted with disgust, saying the words that would end her life here.

A heavy curtain of grey despair fell onto her shoulders. She brushed the tears off her face, but still sat, trembling, wrapping her arms around her knees. He'd every reason to be rid of her. What'd she done when the whole crew set off to rescue him from Niska? Almost let his men take Serenity. Again, if it hadn't been for River…

"Kaylee!" Jayne's voice called down the companionway. "Dinner's on. Don't forget, s'your turn to wash the dishes afterwards."

She jumped, startled. Honestly, her head was killing her. She'd stop at the infirmary before starting the dinner for something. Simon surely would have something on hand. But then, why should Simon do anything for her? It was plain as the stiffness in his posture that he'd no use for her.

As she climbed to her feet, thoughts of how unwanted and unloved she was consumed her, and the curtain kept falling until it covered her whole pained soul.

"Produce was pretty hard to find planetside," Book apologized, putting two dishes down on the table. "Beauregard isn't known for its tremendous crop-growing ability. Still, I was able to find a vendor or two with some fresh greens."

"I'm entirely impressed with your abilities," Inara smiled at him as she took one.

"Brussel sprouts," Jayne wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Not natural, taste like [green camel dung]."

"Guess I won't be eating any of them," Simon responded, putting the spoon back in the bowl.

"They're good for you," Mal said, climbing into his seat at the head of the table. "Grows brain cells an' the like."

"Here, Jayne," Wash handed him the bowl. "Take it all. You're the most in need."

A subdued Kaylee joined them, taking a seat at the end of the bench, away from both Simon and Mal. Mal glanced up and noted it with the slightest frown. Simon was too busy taking steamed asparagus from the other bowl.

"Let's see, what else have we got?" Wash asked as Zoe brought over the last of the platters. "Protein, honey? My favorite! You shouldn't have."

He took a large spoonful of the paste and handed it off to Kaylee, who only looked at it before passing it over to Book. She did the same with the brussel sprouts, asparagus, and algae crunchers.

"Kaylee?" Inara asked.

"Not hungry," she said quietly.

River watched her, tilting her head slightly to one side. She was no longer allowed a knife at the dinner table, so Simon was cutting her sprouts into bite sized pieces.

"Eat up, _mei-mei_," Mal ordered, spooning some protein onto his plate. "You starve away to nothing, we'll have to get us a new mechanic."

He was about to add that it wasn't a task that interested him in the least when he looked down the table at her. She was crying.

"_Mei-mei?"_

Everyone at the table had frozen, spoons or forks stopped in midair or trapped between teeth. With a sob, Kaylee pulled herself away from the table and dashed out of the room.

"Scuse me," Mal said, throwing his napkin on the table and going after her.

"Her head hurts," River confided to her fork, before spearing an asparagus stalk and eating it in two bites. "Also, she smells funny."

Kaylee made it out to the catwalk above the cargo hold, sobs tearing at her throat. It hurt so much – her head, the knowledge that she was a drag on everyone here. They were better off without her. Someone else – someone brave and clever – could easily take her place, and Serenity would be the better for it. She climbed up on the railing and stared down into the hold. It was a fall over twenty feet – fatal if she took it right. She took a deep breath of relief. It would be okay, then. She put her feet up on the top bar of the railing and started to step out into the open air.

"Kaylee, what in- [Mother of God]! Kaylee, NO!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Mal sprinted the last ten yards, grabbed her by the belt and hauled with all his strength, pulling her off the railing, into his arms, and knocking them both flat. Kaylee struggled for a moment, then went limp, weeping as though her heart were broken.

"Simon!" Mal nearly screamed. "Down here, double time!"

He sat up, keeping Kaylee in his arms. There was no fight left in her. As he turned her towards him, he caught a strong whiff of alcohol.

"[Soak my bones in acid]," he swore. "You drunk, _mei-mei_?"

When he touched her face to turn it to his, his hand jerked back. Her skin was burning hot to the touch. Her cheeks were flushed underneath the tear tracks.

Simon arrived, running down the steps with a napkin still in his hands. He immediately kneeled beside them, placing his hands on Kaylee's face and throat.

"Tachycardic," he murmurred. "She's spiked a fever. Must be at least thirty-eight eight." He sniffed. "What's tha- she's been drinking?"

"You tell me, doc," Mal answered. "Never came across a bottle with contents that made me want to take a swan dive."

Simon stopped dead and looked at Mal. "She tried to kill herself?"

Mal nodded. Had he been an inch slower, had she taken off her belt earlier in the day, had any one of a hundred things been marginally different, she wouldn't be crying in his arms just now; she wouldn't have been breathing at all. He started trembling.

"Let's get her to the infirmary," Simon instructed.

They'd had to restrain her, for once laid on the gurney, Kaylee had reached for one of Simon's surgical knives. Mal had caught her hand and forced her to give it up, leaving bruises on her wrist. Simon gave her a sedative, a febrifuge, and a pain killer. Slowly, the knots between her brow relaxed, and her breathing slowed and deepened.

"Measles," River announced from a corner of the infirmary.

"How'd she get in here?" Mal looked up.

"She does that," Simon answered. "She likes Kaylee. So long as she doesn't get in the way, I'd rather she stayed."

"Measles," River insisted.

"It's not measles, River."

"What the hell did Kaylee get into?" Mal asked.

"I don't know," Simon replied, taking a tube of blood from the syringe in Kaylee's arm. "But I will find out."

"Any guesses?"

Simon placed the tube in a holder on the counter. "The suicidal ideation is a symptom along with the fever and flushing. Kaylee was fine this morning, and people just don't go from fine to 'I think I'll kill myself' in the course of a day. Not without some enormous trama."

"Right. So?"

"She might have ingested something toxic. I'd start looking for whatever it was she was drinking."

"I'll get busy on it."

As soon as Mal stepped outside of the infirmary, the rest of the crew gathered around him.

"What's wrong?"

"Will she be okay?"

"Want me to kill someone, boss?"

He sighed. Much as he loved his crew, there were times when things got a little complicated. "Anyone spend time with Kaylee planetside today?"

Everyone shook their heads. 

"She went with Simon," Book supplied.

"Anyone got any idea where she might have a stash of something tasty to drink or maybe some sort of exotic food? You know she'd maim for strawberries."

"She holdin' out on us?" Jayne asked indignantly.

"What is it, Mal?" Inara asked, cutting through the other voices.

"Doc thinks maybe it was something she ate or drank. She's got the smell of someone's been hittin' a bottle pretty hard, too."

"Kaylee? Drinking?" Wash asked. "That doesn't sound like her."

"Okay, split up and start searching the ship. Inara, you take her quarters. I'll check the engine room. Look for anything that she might have gotten into today."

"Plague," offered River. 

"No," Simon answered, not looking up from the test he was running. "She doesn't have any buboes."

River pulled her hair in frustration. "Fresh bread! Feathers!"

"What? River, what are you on about?" He asked, looking up. A tiny thought tickled the back of his head, and then evaporated when the timer dinged at him. The hemoscoptic unit spat out a printed report, which Simon looked at, puzzled.

"Hepaphaegic fever," she insisted.

"River, please! I'm trying to figure this out!"

She threw her hands in the air and flounced out of the infirmary, as Simon thumbed the intercom button.

"Captain?" Simon's voice came over loud and clear.

Mal looked up from sorting through the box of belongings Kaylee kept in the engine room. She was a tidy little mechanic, and nothing had offered the smallest clue.

"Yeah, doc."

"Kaylee didn't have anything to drink. Her blood alcohol content is point zero zero zero percent. I can't find any traces of a contaminant, either."

Mal sighed, running a hand down his face. "Where's that leave us?"

"I'll do a full blood screen and find out what I can. I'm a little worried, though. The febrifuge I gave her has had no effect on her fever."

"Everyone, call off your search," Mal's voice reached them over the intercom. "It's a dead end. Zoe, get the rest of the cargo stowed, and I'll update you as soon as I have news."

"Yes, sir," Zoe murmurred under her breath.

Book left to do the dishes, Jayne returned to his quarters, Wash climbed back up to the bridge, and Zoe looked over the boxes and crates left in a small pile to be stored behind the aft bulkhead. It wasn't much, but suddenly, her head ached with the thought of dragging each of those the ten yards over to the compartment. Long day, she thought, rubbing the space between her eyebrows, and it wouldn't do to bother Simon while he worked on Kaylee.

She grabbed the first carton by its handle and lifted it one handed. Well begun was half done, as her… her…what was the old lady's name? She must be tired if she couldn't remember what she called her mother's mother.

Jayne gave Mal a nod as he kicked in the door to his quarters and climbed down the ladder. Mal paused in front of Kaylee's. The door was still open, which meant that Inara was still inside. Had she not heard him over the intercom?

"'Nara?" he called. There was no answer.

He climbed down the ladder into Kaylee's quarters. Inara was there, standing just beside the built-in dresser, looking at something in her hand. It was a knife, one of Jayne's by the fearsome blade. The room looked tidier than usual. He knew Inara wouldn't purposefully rearrange the contents of Kaylee's room, but wherever she passed, order seemed to follow on the train of her gown. Sure enough, the little collection of trinkets Kaylee kept on her dresser had been arranged with an eye trained to composition. They looked like a miniature art exhibit.

"Jayne gave her a knife?" he asked. The smell of alcohol was stronger down here. Confounded, he looked around to see if a bottle had spilled or been broken.

"'Nara?" he asked again. "You find anything?"

The only warning he had was a soft growl, and then Inara leapt at him, knife in hand. He scrambled out of the way as fast as he could and heard his shirt tear against the point of the knife. She switched hands and stabbed at him, coming close to laying him open across his stomach.

"Jayne!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "JAYNE!"

Where in hell had she learned to knife fight like that? She handled that knife like she was born with it in her hand, and she switched grips from underhand to overhand with unconscious grace. He grabbed a pillow just in time to impale it on the knife and have it pulled out of his hands, shredded. 

"'Nara!" he yelled at her, trying to make some connection.

Her eyes were glassy with fever, and her face was flushed a bright pink. It didn't slow her down at all, and he was trapped in an enclosed space with her, unwilling to fight back while she was more than happy to gut him.

"Jayne!" he yelled again.

"What?!" Jayne yelled back, dropping down into the small compartment.

Inara spun towards him, knife slashing downward.

"Whoa!"

Jayne ducked under her swing and pulled a brick-sized fist back to hit her.

"Don't hurt her!" Mal hollered at him.

Jayne managed to roll his eyes while simultaneously turning his punch into an open handed slap that knocked Inara to hands and knees. Mal grabbed the blanket off Kaylee's bed, threw it over Inara's head, and grabbed her around the waist, locking one of her arms against him.

"Get the knife!"

"Damn straight," Jayne agreed. "That's my favorite one!" He grabbed her wrist and squeezed one particular point with his thumb until her grip opened and the knife fell to the floor.

Inara jack-knifed up from the floor and head butted Mal hard enough to make him see stars. Jayne pulled the sheet off Kaylee's bed, grabbed Inara's ankles, and started swaddling her so tightly she could barely squirm. For a moment, Mal and Jayne looked at each other, breathing hard.

"What'n hell is goin' on?" Jayne asked.

"Let's find out," Mal replied. "Throw her over your shoulder, and let's get her to the infirmary.

There were two crates left, and neither of them should have been heavy, but Zoe found herself stopping every couple of feet to rest. Her head was pounding fit to split into two. She sat down on one of the crates when her feet proved a little too unsteady. She pressed her fingertips against her brow, but it wasn't a tension headache. She was having trouble getting her eyes to focus on the safety lights that lined the cargo bay. Why was it so cold? She looked over to the cargo bay environment readout, and to her surpise, couldn't make out what it said. That was, she saw the numbers, but they didn't register as anything more than a collection of straight and curved lines.

It occurred to her that she was sick. Very sick. Simon might have his hands full dealing with Kaylee, but she was going to need some attention. The intercom was across the bay. All she had to do was reach it, press the button, and call for her husband. He – whatever his name was – would drop his dinosaurs and teleport if he had to.

Carefully steadying herself, she stood. Forty feet. She could do it. On her third step, a spike of pain cut through her skull with such blinding speed, she had no time to cry out. Her head was tearing itself apart under its own power.

There was floor under her hands, against her cheek. She was breathing, almost sobbing as her skull began to crush itself in on her brain. She couldn't move. It was so cold, so cold her breath ought to be freezing.

"Get her restrained," Simon instructed, sliding the needle of his syringe into a tiny bottle and pulling in the dose he thought would break Inara's psychotic episode.

It took both Jayne and Mal to hold her down long enough to get the thick, tough belts around her wrists and ankles. Then Mal held her head to keep her from thrashing around. Her skin was so hot it burned against his. There was no recognition in her eyes.

"Only person I've ever seen like this was that Reaver man we pulled off that floating wreck," Jayne muttered.

"Inara's no Reaver," Mal snapped at him.

The injection started to work as soon as it hit her bloodstream. Her body began to relax, and Simon started applying medtech sensors for cardiac, pulmonary, and basal readings.

"Thirty nine point four," he read her temperature off the display in his hand. "And she was fine fifteen minutes ago."

"What the hell is this, Doc?" Mal demanded. "Two hours ago, we broke atmo, and everyone was finer'n frog hair. Now Kaylee's trying to do herself in, and Inara couldn't be happier stringing my guts up on the walls."

Simon smoothed the back of his hair down, trying to think. "Maybe some exposure planetside – something in the water or the air."

"Then why ain't me or Wash or Jayne down with this? We spent more time planetside than either of those two."

River padded down the steps to the cargo bay. Brothers were so frustrating. He had ears, but he didn't use them. She used words, but he couldn't hear them. On the floor below, Zoe had collapsed, her hands over her head, trying to protect it from what was causing the pain, but River knew that it was nothing hands could fend off. It was all on the inside.

She sat down by Zoe and brushed her hair back.

"You'll get tangles," she whispered. "And your brain doesn't have any pain receptors."

Under her hands, blood vessels were stretched against an increase in volume and pressure. Storms of electrical activity and synchronized synaptic firings caused tiny twitches and spasms. The tiny gland that controlled such things as body temperature spewed prostaglandins and other chemical messengers as the invader disrupted its inner workings.

"I know," River stroked Zoe's hair. "I know. Sometimes it sings."

Under her hand, Zoe's pain began to ebb.

"White blood cell counts are up," Simon said, reading the results from Kaylee's complete blood scan. Inara's would come up in another few minutes. "It's an infection of some sort."

Then Simon stopped, squeezed his eyes closed, and grimaced. "Of course. River was trying to tell me."

"Tell you what? She's startin' a club for raving psychotics, ladies welcome?" Mal asked.

"No. That smell we both noticed – like whisky or some other hard liquor. Some diseases have very particular odors to them. Someone with measles is supposed to smell like feathers. Or is it fresh bread?"

"Supposed to?"

"I've never encountered it. I only worked trauma on Osiris, not communicable diseases. Plague smells foul. Hepaphaegic fever smells metallic. There's something else that smells like mice."

Mal felt the end of his temper begin to fray. "Doc, that's wonderful an' all, you rememberin' such stuff. I imagine you'd win yourself a lifetime supply of hull wax on one of those Cortex programs. That doesn't change what we've got here. What I need from you is to find out exactly what this is an' how we deal with it."

"I don't know what disease it is," Simon responded. "If it's viral – and I think it may be –one of two things will happen."

"And those two things are?"

"We treat their symptoms best as we can. If it's not a new virus, there's a very good chance that there's a specific treatment for it recorded in the Medacad archives, which I might be able to access."

"If it is a new virus?"

Simon paused. "The last new virus to emerge showed up on Aster, the second moon of New Beaumont. That was seven months ago. It had a 94% mortality rate."

Mal was already holding on to the side of a set of shelves, and the only indication he gave of hearing the news was to tighten his hold until his knuckles stood out white against the rest of his hand.

"Hey, guys," announced Wash as he strode in, "there's some really weird comm traffic from Bugg-"

He stopped when he saw Inara lying on the second bunk, strapped down and unconscious. "I missed something, didn't I?"

"Yeah," Mal responded. "What's up?"

"I – uh, there's a whole lot of comm traffic coming out of Buggered past half hour or so. Sounds like half the population – the female half, that is – has gone stark raving bonkers. They're up to their eyeballs in murders, suicides, and people just plain dropping dead in the middle of the street. There's talk on the Alliance channel of an armed intervention."

Simon looked puzzled. "Only the women? There's no such thing as a gender specific virus."

"Virus?" Wash asked. He looked again at Kaylee and Inara, and then his eyes went to Mal.

"Where's Zoe?"

Jayne found her first, head cradled in River's lap, River humming some Faustian tune and combing Zoe's hair with her fingers. Zoe's eyes were open, but the only movement she made was to smile very slightly up at River.

"C'mere," Jayne grabbed River by an arm and hauled her away. "Ain't gonna be-"

River screeched in shock and anger, twisting against Jayne's hand.

"What are you doing?" Simon demanded, running down the stairs, Wash right behind him.

"Baby?" Wash called. He ran over to her, kneeled beside her, and held his hands above her, as though afraid to touch her and do harm.

"She was messin' with Zoe!" Jayne declared.

"Let her go." Simon kneeled beside Zoe and began to check vitals.

"She had her eyes open, now look," Jayne pointed.

Zoe was no longer conscious. Her body trembled and then jerked in a seizure.

"It sings," River explained, reaching for Zoe again. Jayne pulled her hand away.

Wash and Simon together lifted her together and carried her up to the infirmary.

Book, Jayne, River, and Wash waited in the common room. The majority of the lights were off, since it was now past midnight by Serenity's clock. Simon and Mal joined them.

"How bad is it?" Book asked gravely.

Simon looked over at Mal, who began. 

"The Alliance has called a quarantine of Buggered. All ships that left in the past 48 hours are to return immediately."

The three men at the table exchanged glanced.

"I know it, so we're not going. Not puttin' Serenity anywhere near an Alliance cruiser when they're still looking for doc and his sis. There's a chance that things are so crazy planetside they'll lose track of us. There's also a chance they put high priority on chasing down any missin' ships in the hope that they'll keep this from spreading to another planet. So, we stay powered down in the hopes that we won't draw anyone's eyes. Anything gets picked up on the scope, we go to emergency power only.

"Doc," he handed it over to Simon.

Simon took a deep breath. "The virus has a very short incubation period. Anywhere from less than six hours up to twenty-four. It infects both men and women-"

"Hey, I ain't sick," Jayne argued.

"I was going to explain," Simon continued, "that men appear to be carriers while women develop full symptoms. That means we don't land anywhere until we know that we're no longer contagious. I'm pretty sure Kaylee picked it up from me. Inara could have picked it up from anyone, but most likely Mal, since he spoke with her directly after we reboarded Serenity."

"What about River?" Wash asked. She was currently lining up the condiments by date of invention or discovery. Salt went first, of course.

"Her white blood cell count is up, and she's running a fever. So she has been exposed, but other than that, she's exhibiting no symptoms."

"How'd we know if she was?" Jayne asked.

Both Mal and Simon ignored him.

"Someone stays with River 24-7," Mal instructed. "No telling if or when she might suddenly come up with symptoms."

"What about Zoe?" Wash asked. There hadn't been room to stand in the infirmary, and Simon had all but bodily removed him so he could treat her.

"Resting. Her fever's high, same as the others. Same report of severe headache, but she's not experiencing any of the erratic behavior Inara and Kaylee have."

"Beauregard's saying there's an eighty percent mortality rate," Book stated. He had been listening in to the comm traffic along with Wash.

"That's mostly the suicides an' a lot of the ones who go beatin' on anyone don't move fast enough," Mal answered. "People try an' stop 'em, and end up tryin' a little too hard. They've got most of the women under observation one way or another, and the death rate's dropped."

"It's too early to tell what the course of the illness will be," Simon added.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Mal stepped into the silent infirmary. They were still running dark, so no extra lights were on. He could no longer tell if it was night or day. He'd been up so long, his body was convinced it was time to hibernate, but all the coffee he'd had made it impossible. Book was propped up in a chair, open Bible held against his stomach. From the way he was sleeping, he'd get a right bad crick in his neck. Mal nudged him, and Book startled awake.

"Go get some sleep, Shepherd."

Book wiped his eyes with thumb and forefinger and then checked his watch.

"All right, then. Let me know if anything changes, will you?"

"Not a problem." There was a pause. "Tell me, Shepherd, your faith makin' this any less worse?"

Book stopped in the doorway and looked at Mal, who'd stepped aside for him.

"A very foolish person might answer that having faith in God means such things don't matter so much or that the righteous don't have such things happen to them."

"That'd be a foolish person indeed," Mal agreed with him. There was something in his eyes, some faint spark that was more than anger, something verging on hatred.

"I'd only say that my faith helps me get through the bad times. It's a comfort, not a cure-all."

They faced each other for a long moment, and then Mal inclined his head the barest degree and went inside. Book left for his quarters.

Kaylee still slept on the middle gurney, but she was no longer restrained. She hadn't been conscious in over a day, and when she had been, she'd only cried and cried. There'd been no comfort to give her. Her face was still flushed with fever, her temperature so high it hurt to touch her skin. She would kick off her blankets and five minutes later, start shivering with cold. Simon still hadn't found anything that would bring the fever down.

Inara lay on the right hand couch, her wrists strapped down. When she'd been awake earlier that day, she had tried to pull out her IVs, and then spat curses that curled his hair to remember.  Zoe had been lucid for a short while, until she lapsed into something far too close to a coma. All three of them showed the effect of three days' worth of fever – drawn faces, weight loss, dull hair, and the room reeked like a distillery. He'd finally installed an air filter when Simon mentioned that he'd gotten dizzy.

Mal stepped over to Inara's couch and stood between her and Kaylee. The news from Buggered wasn't good. After an initial decline, the mortality stats were up. Over forty percent of the women taken ill by the virus before Serenity had cleared atmo had died. Simon mentioned he expected the final statistics to be above eighty-five percent, since the course of the illness looked to be at least a week long. He talked about things like point mutation, RNA replication, and disease vectors, but what it added up to was that in two weeks or so, more than eight hundred thousand women on Buggered were going to die.

And for all of him, they could go twist in the wind, so long as the three women in here kept body and soul together. He brushed a few strands of hair away from Inara's face. Strange how they rarely had one pleasant thing to say to another, but he remembered well enough how she'd offered to stay with that _huan gwin_ on Persephone when it looked like he would lose the duel. And she'd used her leverage with a councilor to get medical aid after he'd been rescued from Niska. He'd the feeling that if it were in her power, she'd keep him almost in the same manner as so many of her clients wanted to keep her. No, that wasn't fair. She'd never shown any interest in depriving him of his freedom.

She didn't respond to his touch, sunk too far in fever dreams to feel it. He took her hand in his, unbuckled the strap that held it down, and brought it to his lips to kiss her knuckles as gently as he could, fearful of either hurting her or causing her to wake. The skin of her hand was hot and dry against his lips.

"Don't you go nowhere," he whispered to her, and laid her hand back down, deciding not to rebuckle the strap around it.

He kissed Kaylee on the forehead and stroked her hair. The skin around her eyes was puffy from all the crying she'd done. Simon had said not to mind; it was the fever talking, the virus, and not anything real. Mal didn't quite rightly believe him, though. He'd known well enough after he'd pitched Early off into the black, that something had shattered Kaylee's disposition. Where normally the regard of her smile left him feeling like he'd been standing under a warm springtime sun, now and then there was a cold, fitful wind that blew across with no warning and dark clouds that blocked her light. She'd declined to tell him what Early had threatened her with, and he hadn't pushed it, hoping she'd confide in Inara or Book, maybe even in Simon. Had it been within his power, he would have killed Early a hundred times over for what he'd done, and unlike Early, there was no way for him to take his anger and fear out on a virus.

Of the three, Zoe could be said to be doing the best. She stirred every few hours, seeming to sense when Wash came to check on her. There'd been no violence in her, only a drawn, pained expression that haunted him. He'd seen too many men gut shot or holding a severed limb with just that same expression – hurting too much to know just how bad it was and confused by the shock and pain.

Simon had said there was no trace of this illness or one like it in the Medacad archives. The Alliance was supposed to be working on a vaccine and an antiviral medication, but there'd been no mention from them on progress. It wasn't the first time, Mal suspected, that the Alliance had simply quarantined a world and conveniently "forgot" about it. In the meantime, Simon had been working twenty hours and sleeping four, then working another twenty hours in an attempt to come up with something that might help.

Mal looked at the faces of the three people more dear to him than any he could think of. He sat in the chair Book had left, put his head in his hands, and did his best not to weep.

Simon's face rested on a sheaf of printouts listing blood chemistry, cell counts, and one hundred different hormones. His snores rattled the curled up corners at the top of the stack. His hand slowly slipped off the desk until it hung limply at his side.

River stood just behind him, staring into his dreams. It was prying, she knew, like opening the door to the bathroom when someone was in there, but it might give her a chance to better explain what she knew, and that might save Zoe, Kaylee, and Inara. 

"Where are the gorram neuralizers?" Simon shouted at the faceless staff nurse.

She put in his hands what were supposed to be neuralizers, but they changed as soon as he looked at them, and he was left holding another useless credit slip. There were bodies piled up all around the operating table. The worst part of it was that while they were dead, he could still save them, if only he got to them in time. He thought of mothers and fathers weeping with joy to get their child back, a child whose lips were no longer purple with death, a child with all her limbs attached the proper way. If only he could get those gorram neuralizers.

"It's singing."

Simon looked up from the operating table. The faceless nurse was holding up a book of poetry by a minor Arielian aristocrat. On the other side of the table, past the anesthesiologist holding a vacuum tube (what was he doing with that? Didn't he know he was supposed to use an intubator?) was River. She was eleven or so and looking up at him with that cocked eyebrow that told him he was about to be informed of something he'd missed, but she'd found elementary beyond belief.

"What's singing, River?"

She climbed up on a box beside the table so that she was eye to eye with him.

"The amygdala is," she replied, looking down at his patient. "And the corpus callosum, the neocortex, the anterior commisure, the splenium, and the temporal lobes."

"That's … those are the places in your brain that were damaged."

"Not damaged," she sighed, as though talking to a village idiot was quite the tiring thing "Rearranged, altered, supposedly improved, though they never got that far."

"That's good?" He checked the vitals of his patient. Temperature was 39.7, blood pressure 177 over 100, pulse 100, and respirations 45 per minute. Things were going downhill.

"No, dummy, that's not good. Choirs sing together. Brain cells fire asynchronously. Otherwise, the whole thing just seizures. You know that."

"That's nice, River," he answered, searching his tray of instruments for a neutralizer. "That's lovely, really, but I've got to save this patient, and I don't have ti-"

He looked down at his patient. It was Kaylee. She was dead.

He sat up with a jerk, gasping for air, and jerked again when River put her hands on his shoulders.

"It's singing," she insisted.

He stood shakily and guided River back to his bed, where she'd been sleeping while he worked on figuring out what he could do about this virus. Her skin was warm, so he checked her temp, 38.3 degrees. Feverish, but nowhere near as high as the others. Again, though, none of the fever medications he'd used were any good. Fever was normally the body turning up its thermostat in a ploy to burn out the invading germs. He was beginning to suspect that this was something a little different.

[Bankrupt popsicle stand], what a dream, he thought, rubbing his eyes. And where was the amphaytolactine? He was due to give River another shot. She watched him as he found a new syringe and the vial. His head would not clear of sleep, so he shook it, blinking to clear his eyes.

Amphaytolactine, it was a compound that affected several different centers of the brain, but not all of the ones that were injured in River. What had she said? Rearranged Supposedly improved. It also affected preoptic nucleus, the part of the brain that controlled body temperature. He stopped, trying not to scare away the idea that had just started to form.

"River, are you singing right now?" he asked.

She grinned at him, hugely. "Some. A little bit. But it's better. Not so in tune."

In tune, synchronous. Synchronous synaptic firings could cause epileptic seizures of the brain. That small idea was scratching on the inside of his head. Amygdala. Beef up that part of the brain, overstimulate it – like what had happened to River – caused aggression, sometimes to the point of unreasoning violence.

Inara's attack on Mal. The woman, Doreen, that the others had mentioned.

But what about Kaylee?

Neocortex and temporal lobes. Of course. Severe depression affected both of those cognitive centers, depressing activity, changing the magnetic field of the brain, and disrupting the delicate balance of neurotransmitters. It would take an enormous attack, but a new virus, completely unrecognized by the immune system might be able to infiltrate quickly enough to cause such a disruption.

Zoe? Her complaint, before she'd passed out had been of a terrible headache. The headache could have been caused by the fever, the high blood pressure, the rapid change in vital stats, but… corpus callosum, the splenium, and the anterior commisure were all part of the connection between the hemispheres of the brain. Zoe'd also had trouble getting her vision to focus, speaking, and naming things when he'd examined her. If the connection between the two hemispheres was damaged, or the brain was trying desperately to shunt around aggravated areas and the connection was overwhelmed by increased blood supply, straining the blood vessels…

He looked at his right hand, the vial of amphaytolactine clutched in his fingers, and then he looked up at River.

_She had been sick all along._

The amphaytolactine had kept her fever down and prevented the virus from gaining a foothold in her brain. He looked at his left hand where he still held the syringe, and then in a scramble that nearly tripped him headfirst into the bulkhead, he ran for the infirmary.

"Check this!" he barked at Mal, waking him up.

"Whu-"

"Check my math. I can't make a mistake, and I'm too tired to redo it."

Mal took the pad of paper from Simon, focusing his gritty eyes on the column of numbers. Body weight in kilos, microliters per kilo, multiplication, and a dosage of some annotated drug.

"Wash'd be better for this," he groaned, looking for something to write with. "He can parse differential equations in his head."

"Wash isn't here. You are."

It took a few minutes. He double, then tripled checked the numbers.

"They're good."

Simon laid out three tiny syringes, graduated in tenths of milliliters, and began preparing the doses.

"You figured something out," Mal said, watching him closely.

"You could say that. Actually, it was River. She…" He stopped as he realized what he was about to say. She'd told him in a dream. His sister had been in his dream, and she had spoken to him. His knees wouldn't hold him up.

"Doc?"

He shook off his bafflement and returned his attention to the task at hand.

"Wash, man, wake up."

There was something shaking his shoulder. Groaning, he reached for his wife. Zoe would make whatever this was go away.

Zoe wasn't there. The bed wasn't there for that matter. He was sleeping in the cockpit. His face was stuck to the radar screen. Painfully, he sat up, feeling the skin of his face pull away from the screen. Jayne's hand was on his shoulder.

"Zoe's askin' for you. Mal told me to bring you down."

For a second, he couldn't phrase the question. "She's…"

"Better," Jayne shrugged, the slightest smile tugging on his mouth. "Prolly better'n you're doin."

His feet didn't touch the deck as he ran down to the infirmary. Mal grabbed him just before he went in.

"Now listen," he said sternly, the marks of several sleepless nights on his face. "She's tired, her head hurts, and she's still runnin' a fever. Simon thinks he's got a handle on this, but he doesn't know for sure."

"Right. Gotcha. Could you please move before I try to hurt you, captain?"

Mal let him go, and as soon as Wash stepped into the infirmary, his eyes found hers, and she smiled. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

It was night again, and Mal stood watch in the infirmary. It was only fair, since he'd gotten a good ten hours sleep thanks to whatever Simon had slipped in his coffee. At least, that's what he thought it had been. Even Jayne had refused to be forthcoming.

Zoe was back in her quarters, cared for by her husband and looked in on by everyone else, including River. The two seemed to have bonded somehow. Kaylee and Inara were still in the infirmary. Kaylee's fever had finally broken in a drenching sweat, and she'd slept so soundly, no one had bothered to try to wake her. Inara was curled in a small ball, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. She'd woken up several times, but hadn't managed to string together a coherent sentence. It didn't seem to bother her too much, as she fell asleep as soon as one discombobulated pack of words was finished. He checked her brow, and sure enough, her fever had broken as well. He picked up a soft cloth and wiping the sweat off her, then pulled her blanket up to her chin so she wouldn't get chilled.

"Cap'n?" There was only one person that soft voice could belong to.

"Mornin', Miss Kaylee," he whispered back to her, turning from Inara's bed.

"Cap'n, why's it so dark?"

"Because I turned off the lights. Most everyone else has gone to bed."

"Oh," she thought about that for a moment. "Where am I? Something happen?"

"You're in the infirmary, Kaylee," he reached down and smoothed a lock of her flyaway hair back. "You were sick for a while, but now you're gettin' better."

Simon had mentioned that the virus seemed to disrupt the transition from short to long term memory. Events longer than a few minutes ago hadn't been encoded into memory. Zoe said she last recalled discussing whether nose breaking was an appropriate negotiations technique. Mal dearly hoped that Kaylee remembered nothing of climbing up on the railing and almost taking her life. They would have to keep a close eye on her to make sure the suicidal depression caused by the virus cleared up one way or another. It was, after all, nowhere near as fun as Wash's latest bar trick of handing his wife an object to hold in her left hand and then asking her what it was. She might be holding on to a coffee mug, but she couldn't name it. Hand her a pencil and she could draw the most realistic portrait of a coffee mug you'd ever see, but she couldn't conjure up the word. Let her put it in her right hand, and the word would instantly come to her. All a part of hemispheric cognitive functions, Simon informed them. Then he added that it should pass in another week or two, as her immune system destroyed the remainders of the virus.

"Everything…okay?" Kaylee asked.

"Everything's gonna be just fine, _mei-mei_. Just understand that you don't ever get to do such a thing again. _Dong ma?"_

"_Dong ma, Cap'n. S'okay if I take a nap?" she yawned._

"You go right ahead and sleep."

She squeezed his hand before sighing deeply and nodding off once again.

When Inara woke up the following morning and was finally able to put two words together in the right order, Mal stood back while Book tended to her and watched from just outside the infirmary.

"And Simon and Wash were able to route a wave through about eleventeen different points, completely disguised, to the Medacad on Osiris, suggesting a successful course of treatment," Book explained. "Captain told them if they wanted to leave a breadcrumb trail for the Alliance to their own sorry hides, that was their business, but on no account were they to even hint at Serenity."

"Sounds like him," Inara smiled sleepily.

"Beauregard suffered some pretty steep casualties," Book continued soberly. "Over two hundred thousand women died before the Alliance got the supplies to them that were needed. More than half of those women died during the first hour of symptom onset, though, and no supplies would have saved them from that."

"I'm so sorry."

"A great many more would have died if not for Simon."

Inara nodded and dozed off. With a gentle pat, Book put her hand back on top of the blanket and turned down the light, then left. Mal watched him go and turned back to look at Inara and Kaylee, the both of them sleeping as easy as could be. He took a deep breath. The pervading reek of Beau's Chance, the name that had stuck, had been pulled out by the air recyclers. The Alliance vessel searching for ships that had left Buggered had missed them by a far stretch of distance. None of the men carried the virus past the first week. He felt a tight knot somewhere under his breastbone start to loosen. He'd never again be so trusting as to say everything would be all right, but maybe it was enough to think that it wasn't all going straight to hell.

"River?"

Simon found her sitting on the catwalk above the cargo bay. Her arms were wrapped around her legs, and she rocked back and forth to some tune only she could hear.

"River?" He sat down beside her.

She startled when he touched her arm, then turned her face from him and started rocking again.

"_Mei-mei, what's wrong?"_

She didn't answer at first, but finally looked up at him. "So loud. The noise," she tried to explain. "Chords, arpeggios, voices in tune."

He studied her face. "The singing? Is it singing?"

She nodded miserably. "It crowds. There's no room! I can't fit into it."

The amphaytolactine had stopped working then, and the habits of River's abused brain were reasserting themselves. She had been the key to solving the riddle of the virus, but it had done her little good. He pulled her close in a hug and let her rest her head on his chest, tucking it under his chin. Then he started rocking her back and forth a bit.

"We'll get it figured out, _mei-mei_," he told her. "You and me, we're an unbeatable team."

**Finis**


End file.
